E. Lockhart
Photography

(Trans)capes 2025 University of Michigan School of Medicine solo Exhibition Artist Statement

The creation of (Trans)capes began during a period of time where I was deeply ashamed of my post-transition body. It was 2 years after the start of COVID, I was 65 pounds overweight, and I could not summon the strength to show photographs of my fat body. Taken at home, these images shattered the masculine ideal I had formed with knives and pens in the creation of lifesize self-portraits during the first year of my transition. At the same time I was rediscovering my spirituality, reclaiming my connection to the natural space, and learning to love the context in which my trans body exists. By using the theory of representational transparency - which dictates that the objective truth of a photograph is based in part on the photographer's intent for the image - these photographs become self-portraits using the trees as an objective representation of my trans body. 

As you look at these photographs, I watch you to think about an incision. I want you to think about an incision that creates a space for someone to feel whole. Not a hole, but a place where the imaginative masculinity created in the mind of a nine-year-old “tomboy” dressed in a backward hat and overalls comes true. When you look at these pieces, think about a small human whose body is starting to grow in places that he doesn't like. A person who wears a sports bra from the time his breasts begin to bud in 3rd grade until he finally accepts them as real 5 years later, under the immense pressure of pre-teen girlhood. When you look at these pieces, think of a person who for decades did not see their body as a part of themselves, choosing instead to destroy it. Observe a person who was once so lost that their humanity was only felt through acts of self harm, illicit drug use, and a myriad of other trials and tribulations that almost destroyed his body. 

Now look at the trees and oceans of sand. When you gaze at these landscapes these trees are a towering force, eternalized in the photograph. They are beautiful and they are diseased. You look at the seasonal changes, when time transforms the space where the trees exist from falling leaves to a fresh blanket of snow. As summer shifts and fall begins, your belief in a perpetual summer is dashed when the green world around you flashes with bright reds, oranges, and yellows before dropping to the ground in a dull monochromatic beige. In this series you can see this muted beauty in the winter cyanotypes. You observe that though the multi-colored leaves have dropped to the ground to rot, the trees do not lose their beauty nor do they lose the taxonomy of a tree.

A tree does not need leaves for people to understand that it's a tree.

Sand does not need water for people to understand that it's sand. 

You do not need to see if I have a penis to understand that I am a man. 

By removing the figure and focusing on the landscape for this exhibition, I am removing the potential to pathologize transness based off of the external features of the body. By employing the transgender gaze onto landscape photographs, the viewer can understand how the trans masculine ideal could be represented and are also privy to the nuances of the transitioning mind despite the body's physical appearance. Through the presentation of this work in a medical school space that is traditionally reserved for cisgender and heteronormative people, this work sits in protest of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” structure unconsciously enforced throughout an education in the health sciences. The images in (Trans)capes and its umbrella series (Trans)Manhood reject the notion that there is a correct and incorrect way to look “trans” focusing instead on the context in which the trans body exists. Transhood is a liminal space. That is to say being trans inevitably places you in a space that is in between, never complete, and always on the way to something better; much like a medical school hallway. 

The work in this series acknowledges that being transgender exists beyond the corporeal form and is instead an idea of what oneself is in relation to the space around them. In (Trans)capes, the natural feminine is juxtaposed against small intrusions of the masculine construction of artificial wellness, happiness, and leisure that parks built upon nature preserves are intended to provide. In each image, the feminine tree is shown in relation to the land in which it exists, an acknowledgment of the space around it, and the imposition of manhood on its health. 

Many of the trees in this series are diseased. 

Many of the trees in the series have lost branches. 

Many of the trees have been irrevocably changed due to the input of man.

The goal of this installation is to celebrate the radical integration of transgender people as whole beings - people with personalities that transcend their individual parts - into the medical school culture. By presenting this work throughout the hallways of a hub of medical academia, each piece challenges the hetero and cis normative standards of gender prevalent in the medical field. In this space (Trans)capes aims to enhance cultural competency among future doctors by showing that trans identity extends beyond physical pathology. A shift from the valuation of aesthetic correctness of the trans body, this work stands in celebration and encouragement of transgender ways of knowing and being throughout the medical field.

Students, as the future of the medical profession studying at one of the greatest universities in the world, you exist in a space where innovation is constantly happening. It is absolutely imperative that you take transgender medical care beyond the land of mere cultural competence and instead radically integrate transness into your practice.  Because until we radically integrate - that is to purposefully create space in all parts of society in which no one is left behind - we will not live in a society where all are able to achieve the ultimate goal of medicine; wellness.